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Cook County restarts search for full-time county administrator, hires recruiter to repost position
Summary
After a prior recruitment, the board directed its executive-search consultant to repost the county-administrator vacancy with some question-and-process tweaks and a new timeline; the board asked to review and refine interview questions, timeline, and recorded interview procedures before the next round of semifinals.
The Cook County Board of Commissioners directed its executive-search consultant to repost the county-administrator job announcement with minor revisions to interview questions and the schedule, restarting the search for a permanent county administrator.
Pat Lowe of DDA Human Resources, who led the prior recruitment, told the board she would repost the profile and continue targeted outreach. Commissioners said they would refine the interview questions and discuss small procedural changes — for example, whether to make interview questions available shortly before a candidate’s panel appearance, whether to allow public observation of interviews (with delayed playback), and how much time to build between candidate interviews for board deliberation and follow-up queries.
Commissioners emphasized the need to balance hard qualifications (local-government experience, budgetary oversight) with “soft” qualities such as values, community fit and relationship skills. Commissioner Gamble urged the board to ensure that interview questions more directly probe “who the person is” in addition to experience. Interim administrator Rena Rogers’ employment terms were already approved by the board earlier in the meeting; staff said the county will post the full-time position and accept applications for roughly four weeks.
DDA said it will post the job, circulate the announcement through prior outlets and provide the board with a recommended timeline and proposed questions within days. The board asked staff to send a final timeline and to share where the position will be posted and whom DDA will contact for outreach. Members also asked that DDA provide a brief summary of the candidate-screening rationale (how semifinalists were selected) when it forwards materials to the board.
Board members said they expect a public posting to go up immediately and that they will reconvene around the schedule DDA provides to consider semifinalists and interview processes.
